Super Mario Bros: "Hey, kids, itsa Mario! I wanna taka some time from da game, to tell you about the dangers of competition in da OS market. If da 9 US states of Bowser have their way, competition will enter da OS market and Yoshi willa die! Mama Mia!"

Pokemon: "Picachoo just evolved into the most stable, user friendly, Pokemon ever: XPachoo!"

Legend of Zelda: "Link, Hyrule can only be saved from the evil free office suite spread by Ganon by gathering the three pieces of Mircosoft Office to form the triad!"

Thank God this deal didn't go through. The combined evil of Microsoft and Nintendo would have reached critical mass, collapsed inward on itself and formed a black hole that would surely have destroyed us all.

Years ago, after reading about all the shifty crap that Nintendo pulled in this book [amazon.com], I started thinking of them as the Microsoft of Japan. Price fixing, exclusivity deals with retailers to lock out competitors, the lockout chip feature in their carts, lots of different stuff. Nintendo and Microsoft already have a lot of similar pages in their respective playbooks.

Microsoft was probably salivating at the thought of having a viselike grip on people's lives from the time they fire up their first video game as a kid, until the final time they turn off their PC before going on to die in their sleep later that night. Luckily for us, the X-Box is proving to be an also-ran, so we won't have to worry about it.

First, Mario kills Luigi, who is unnecessary competition. Of course, he has nothing to fear from Bowser: his employer has proprietary rights to hellfire. Soon the Kuppas will be building Mario's.NET empire, while the courts are paid off with funding from Yoshi's magic mushroom factory.

I disagree with the point about buying Sega. Why would Microsoft buy a company that has a history of lying to its customers, putting out faulty products which they don't support for very long and then throwing a brand new one on you once you realize how terrible the old version was. Oh wait...

You know, I'm Jewish and I keep hearing about this whole worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Apparently I'm not entered in their records correctly - could someone tell me who I need to write to so I can get my monthly check and my "How to manipulate the media" packet?

Better yet, a version of Super Smash Brothers featuring Clippy! Seeing how much people complain about him, there are probably millions of people willing to buy the system if they'd get get a chance to beat the little bastard to a pulp, again, and again, and again.

[Maybe that's the killer app the xbox needs... they could start a whole subgenre of `torture clippy' games... `Clippy Tied to a Post Knife Party'... ]